If Madison really believed that the people of the United States would unitedly press onward and defend the flag when once he had thrown it forward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the disaffection in New England. Perhaps, like Jefferson in the days of the embargo, he mistook the spirit of this opposition, thinking that it was largely partisan clamor which could safely be disregarded. What neither of these Virginians appreciated was the peculiar fanatical and sectional character of this Federalist opposition, and the extremes to which it would go. Yet abundant evidence lay before their eyes. Thirty-four Federalist members of the House, nearly all from New England, issued an address to their constituents bitterly arraigning the Administration and deploring the declaration of war; the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, following this example, published another address, denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of the best interests of the people and imploring all good citizens to meet in town and county assemblies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer except for a defensive war; and a meeting of citizens of Rockingham County, New Hampshire, adopted a memorial drafted by young Daniel Webster, which hinted that the separation of the States—"an event fraught with incalculable evils"—might sometime occur on just such an occasion as this. Town after town, and county after county, took up the hue and cry, keeping well within the limits of constitutional opposition, it is true, but weakening the arm of the Government just when it should have struck the enemy effective blows.

Nor was the President without enemies in his own political household. The Republicans of New York, always lukewarm in their support of the Virginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing his reelection. They found a shrewd and not overscrupulous leader in DeWitt Clinton and an adroit campaign manager in Martin Van Buren. Both belonged to that school of New York politicians of which Burr had been master. Anything to beat Madison was their cry. To this end they were willing to condemn the war-policy, to promise a vigorous prosecution of the war, and even to negotiate for peace. What made this division in the ranks of the Republicans so serious was the willingness of the New England Federalists to make common cause with Clinton. In September a convention of Federalists endorsed his nomination for the Presidency.

Under the weight of accumulating disasters, military and political, it seemed as though Madison must go down in defeat. Every New England State but Vermont cast its electoral votes for Clinton; all the Middle States but Pennsylvania also supported him; and Maryland divided its vote. Only the steadiness of the Southern Republicans and of Pennsylvania saved Madison; a change of twenty electoral votes would have ended the Virginia Dynasty.* Now at least Madison must have realized the poignant truth which the Federalists were never tired of repeating: he had entered upon the war as President of a divided people.

* In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89.

Only a few months' experience was needed to convince the military authorities at Washington that the war must be fought mainly by volunteers. Every military consideration derived from American history warned against this policy, it is true, but neither Congress nor the people would entertain for an instant the thought of conscription. Only with great reluctance and under pressure had Congress voted to increase the regular army and to authorize the President to raise fifty thousand volunteers. The results of this legislation were disappointing, not to say humiliating. The conditions of enlistment were not such as to encourage recruiting; and even when the pay had been increased and the term of service shortened, few able-bodied citizens would respond. If any such desired to serve their country, they enrolled in the State militia which the President had been authorized to call into active service for six months.

In default of a well-disciplined regular army and an adequate volunteer force, the Administration was forced more and more to depend upon such quotas of militia as the States would supply. How precarious was the hold of the national Government upon the State forces, appeared in the first months of the war. When called upon to supply troops to relieve the regulars in the coast defenses, the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut flatly refused, holding that the commanders of the State militia, and not the President, had the power to decide when exigencies demanded the use of the militia in the service of the United States. In his annual message Madison termed this "a novel and unfortunate exposition" of the Constitution, and he pointed out—what indeed was sufficiently obvious—that if the authority of the United States could be thus frustrated during actual war, "they are not one nation for the purpose most of all requiring it." But what was the President to do? Even if he, James Madison, author of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, could so forget his political creed as to conceive of coercing a sovereign state, where was the army which would do his bidding? The President was the victim of his own political theory.

These bitter revelations of 1812—the disaffection of New England, the incapacity of two of his secretaries, the disasters of his staff officers on the frontier, the slow recruiting, the defiance of Massachusetts and Connecticut—almost crushed the President. Never physically robust, he succumbed to an insidious intermittent fever in June and was confined to his bed for weeks. So serious was his condition that Mrs. Madison was in despair and scarcely left his side for five long weeks. "Even now," she wrote to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end of July, "I watch over him as I would an infant, so precarious is his convalescence." The rumor spread that he was not likely to survive, and politicians in Washington began to speculate on the succession to the Presidency.

But now and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading the White House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the Constitution over the Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the sting out of Hull's surrender at Detroit, and other victories at sea followed, glorious in the annals of American naval warfare, though without decisive influence on the outcome of the war. Of much greater significance was Perry's victory on Lake Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to the invasion of Canada. This brilliant combat followed by the Battle of the Thames cheered the President in his slow convalescence. Encouraging, too, were the exploits of American privateers in British waters, but none of these events seemed likely to hasten the end of the war. Great Britain had already declined the Russian offer of mediation.

Last day but one of the year 1813 a British schooner, the Bramble, came into the port of Annapolis bearing an important official letter from Lord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State. With what eager and anxious hands Monroe broke the seal of this letter may be readily imagined. It might contain assurances of a desire for peace; it might indefinitely prolong the war. In truth the letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh had declined to accept the good offices of Russia, but he was prepared to begin direct negotiations for peace. Meantime the war must go on—with the chances favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also brought the alarming news of Napoleon's defeat on the plains of Leipzig. Now for the first time Great Britain could concentrate all her efforts upon the campaign in North America. No wonder the President accepted Castlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the three commissioners sent to Russia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeed while he nerved himself to meet the crucial year of the war.

Had the President been fully apprized of the elaborate plans of the British War Office, his anxieties would have been multiplied many times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were asked to repel invasion. The Administration had not yet drunk the bitter dregs of the cup of humiliation.

That some part of the invading British forces might be detailed to attack the Capital was vaguely divined by the President and his Cabinet; but no adequate measures had been taken for the defense of the city when, on a fatal August day, the British army marched upon it. The humiliating story of the battle of Bladensburg has been told elsewhere. The disorganized mob which had been hastily assembled to check the advance of the British was utterly routed almost under the eyes of the President, who with feelings not easily described found himself obliged to join the troops fleeing through the city. No personal humiliation was spared the President and his family. Dolly Madison, never once doubting that the noise of battle which reached the White House meant an American victory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush of troops warned her of danger. She and her friends were then swept along in the general rout. She was forced to leave her personal effects behind, but her presence of mind saved one treasure in the White House—a large portrait of General Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That priceless portrait and the plate were all that survived. The fleeing militiamen had presence of mind enough to save a large quantity of the wine by drinking it, and what was left, together with the dinner on the table, was consumed by Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the White House, the Treasury, and the War Office were in flames, and only a severe thunderstorm checked the conflagration.*

* Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers and men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally indefensible outrages committed by American troops under General Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and other public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and burned. See Kingsford's "History of Canada," VIII, pp. 259- 61.

Heartsick and utterly weary, the President crossed the Potomac at about six o'clock in the evening and started westward in a carriage toward Montpelier. He had been in the saddle since early morning and was nearly spent. To fatigue was added humiliation, for he was forced to travel with a crowd of embittered fugitives and sleep in a forlorn house by the wayside. Next morning he overtook Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteen miles from the Capital. Here they passed another day of humiliation, for refugees who had followed the same line of flight reviled the President for betraying them and the city. At midnight, alarmed at a report that the British were approaching, the President fled to another miserable refuge deeper in the Virginia woods. This fear of capture was quite unfounded, however, for the British troops had already evacuated the city and were marching in the opposite direction.

Two days later the President returned to the capital to collect his Cabinet and repair his shattered Government. He found public sentiment hot against the Administration for having failed to protect the city. He had even to fear personal violence, but he remained "tranquil as usual... though much distressed by the dreadful event which had taken place." He was still more distressed, however, by the insistent popular clamor for a victim for punishment. All fingers pointed at Armstrong as the man responsible for the capture of the city. Armstrong offered to resign at once, but the President in distress would not hear of resignation. He would advise only "a temporary retirement" from the city to placate the inhabitants. So Armstrong departed, but by the time he reached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of his situation and sent his resignation to the President. The victim had been offered up. At his own request Monroe was now made Secretary of War, though he continued also to discharge the not very heavy duties of the State Department.

It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who gathered in September, 1814, in special session at the President's call. Among those who gazed sadly at the charred ruins of the Capitol were Calhoun, Cheves, and Grundy, whose voices had been loud for war and who had pictured their armies overrunning the British possessions. Clay was at this moment endeavoring to avert a humiliating surrender of American claims at Ghent. To the sting of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. The only public building which had escaped the general conflagration was the Post and Patent Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses awaited the President's message.

A visitor from another planet would have been strangely puzzled to make the President's words tally with the havoc wrought by the enemy on every side. A series of achievements had given new luster to the American arms; "the pride of our naval arms had been amply supported"; the American people had "rushed with enthusiasm to the scenes where danger and duty call." Not a syllable about the disaster at Washington! Not a word about the withdrawal of the Connecticut militia from national service, and the refusal of the Governor of Vermont to call out the militia just at the moment when Sir George Prevost began his invasion of New York; not a word about the general suspension of specie payment by all banks outside of New England; not a word about the failure of the last loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the Government. Only a single sentence betrayed the anxiety which was gnawing Madison's heart: "It is not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for its greatest efforts." What the situation demanded, he left his secretaries to say.

The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one member of the Administration who was prepared to grapple with reality and who had the courage of his convictions. While Jefferson was warning him that it was nonsense to talk about a regular army, Monroe told Congress flatly that no reliance could be pled in the militia and that a permanent force of one hundred thousand men must be raised—raised by conscription if necessary. Throwing Virginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds, he affirmed the constitutional right of Congress to draft citizens. The educational value of war must have been very great to bring Monroe to this conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so far. One by one Monroe's alternative plans were laid aside; and the country, like a rudderless ship, drifted on.

An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the establishment of any efficient national army at this time. Every plan encountered ultimately the inexorable fact that the Treasury was practically empty and the credit of the Government gone. Secretary Campbell's report was a confession of failure to sustain public credit. Some seventy-four millions would be needed to carry the existing civil and military establishments for another year, and of this sum, vast indeed in those days, only twenty-four millions were in sight. Where the remaining fifty millions were to be found, the Secretary could not say. With this admission of incompetence Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th of November his successor, A. J. Dallas, notified holders of government securities at Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations.

It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the Government in the face, that the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed delegates to confer with delegates from other New England legislatures on their common grievances and dangers and to devise means of security and defense. The Legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island responded promptly by appointing delegates to meet at Hartford on the 15th of December; and the proposed convention seemed to receive popular indorsement in the congressional elections, for with but two exceptions all the Congressmen chosen were Federalists. Hot-heads were discussing without any attempt at concealment the possibility of reconstructing the Federal Union. A new union of the good old Thirteen States on terms set by New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility. News-sheets referred enthusiastically to the erection of a new Federal edifice which should exclude the Western States. Little wonder that the harassed President in distant Washington was obsessed with the idea that New England was on the verge of secession.

William Wirt who visited Washington at this time has left a vivid picture of ruin and desolation:

"I went to look at the ruins of the President's house. The rooms which you saw so richly furnished, exhibited nothing but unroofed naked walls, cracked, defaced, and blackened with fire. I cannot tell you what I felt as I walked amongst them.... I called on the President. He looks miserably shattered and wobegone. In short, he looked heartbroken. His mind is full of the New England sedition. He introduced the subject, and continued to press it—painful as it obviously was to him. I denied the probability, even the possibility that the yeomanry of the North could be induced to place themselves under the power and protection of England, and diverted the conversation to another topic; but he took the first opportunity to return to it, and convinced me that his heart and mind were painfully full of the subject."

What added to the President's misgivings was the secrecy in which the members of the Hartford Convention shrouded their deliberations. An atmosphere of conspiracy seemed to envelop all their proceedings. That the "deliverance of New England" was at hand was loudly proclaimed by the Federalist press. A reputable Boston news-sheet advised the President to procure a faster horse than he had mounted at Bladensburg, if he would escape the swift vengeance of New England.

The report of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate with the fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the Federalist press. It arraigned the Administration in scathing language, to be sure, but it did not advise secession. "The multiplied abuses of bad administrations" did not yet justify a severance of the Union, especially in a time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitution were not incurable; yet the infractions of the Constitution by the National Government had been so deliberate, dangerous, and palpable as to put the liberties of the people in jeopardy and to constrain the several States to interpose their authority to protect their citizens. The legislatures of the several States were advised to adopt measures to protect their citizens against such unconstitutional acts of Congress as conscription and to concert some arrangement with the Government at Washington, whereby they jointly or separately might undertake their own defense, and retain a reasonable share of the proceeds of Federal taxation for that purpose. To remedy the defects of the Constitution seven amendments were proposed, all of which had their origin in sectional hostility to the ascendancy of Virginia and to the growing power of the New West. The last of these proposals was a shot at Madison and Virginia: "nor shall the President be elected from the same State two terms in succession." And finally, should these applications of the States for permission to arm in their own defense be ignored, then and in the event that peace should not be concluded, another convention should be summoned "with such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momentous may require."

Massachusetts, under Federalist control, acted promptly upon these suggestions. Three commissioners were dispatched to Washington to effect the desired arrangements for the defense of the State. The progress of these "three ambassadors," as they styled themselves, was followed with curiosity if not with apprehension. In Federalist circles there was a general belief that an explosion was at hand. A disaster at New Orleans, which was now threatened by a British fleet and army, would force Madison to resign or to conclude peace. But on the road to Washington, the ambassadors learned to their surprise that General Andrew Jackson had decisively repulsed the British before New Orleans, on the 8th of January, and on reaching the Capital they were met by the news that a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Their cause was not only discredited but made ridiculous. They and their mission were forgotten as the tension of war times relaxed. The Virginia Dynasty was not to end with James Madison.



CHAPTER XII. THE PEACEMAKERS

On a May afternoon in the year 1813, a little three-hundred-ton ship, the Neptune, put out from New Castle down Delaware Bay. Before she could clear the Capes she fell in with a British frigate, one of the blockading squadron which was already drawing its fatal cordon around the seaboard States. The captain of the Neptune boarded the frigate and presented his passport, from which it appeared that he carried two distinguished passengers, Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, Envoys Extraordinary to Russia. The passport duly viseed, the Neptune resumed her course out into the open sea, by grace of the British navy.

One of these envoys watched the coast disappear in the haze of evening with mingled feelings of regret and relief. For twelve weary years Gallatin had labored disinterestedly for the land of his adoption and now he was recrossing the ocean to the home of his ancestors with the taunts of his enemies ringing in his ears. Would the Federalists never forget that he was a "foreigner"? He reflected with a sad, ironic smile that as a "foreigner with a French accent" he would have distinct advantages in the world of European diplomacy upon which he was entering. He counted many distinguished personages among his friends, from Madame de Stael to Alexander Baring of the famous London banking house. Unlike many native Americans he did not need to learn the ways of European courts, because he was to the manner born: he had no provincial habits which he must slough off or conceal. Also he knew himself and the happy qualities with which Nature had endowed him—patience, philosophic composure, unfailing good humor. All these qualities were to be laid under heavy requisition in the work ahead of him.

James Bayard, Gallatin's fellow passenger, had never been taunted as a foreigner, because several generations had intervened since the first of his family had come to New Amsterdam with Peter Stuyvesant. Nothing but his name could ever suggest that he was not of that stock commonly referred to as native American. Bayard had graduated at Princeton, studied law in Philadelphia, and had just opened a law office in Wilmington when he was elected to represent Delaware in Congress. As the sole representative of his State in the House of Representatives and as a Federalist, he had exerted a powerful influence in the disputed election of 1800, and he was credited with having finally made possible the election of Jefferson over Burr. Subsequently he was sent to the Senate, where he was serving when he was asked by President Madison to accompany Gallatin on this mission to the court of the Czar. Granting that a Federalist must be selected, Gallatin could not have found a colleague more to his liking, for Bayard was a good companion and perhaps the least partisan of the Federalist leaders.

It was midsummer when the Neptune dropped anchor in the harbor of Kronstadt. There Gallatin and Bayard were joined by John Quincy Adams, Minister to Russia, who had been appointed the third member of the commission. Here was a pureblooded American by all the accepted canons. John Quincy Adams was the son of his father and gloried secretly in his lineage: a Puritan of the Puritans in his outlook upon human life and destiny. Something of the rigid quality of rock-bound New England entered into his composition. He was a foe to all compromise—even with himself; to him Duty was the stern daughter of the voice of God, who admonished him daily and hourly of his obligations. No character in American public life has unbosomed himself so completely as this son of Massachusetts in the pages of his diary. There are no half tones in the pictures which he has drawn of himself, no winsome graces of mind or heart, only the rigid outlines of a soul buffeted by Destiny. Gallatin—the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin—must have derived much quiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander who took himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made their association not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may not call their intimacy a friendship—Adams had few, if any friendships; but it contained the essential foundation for friendship—complete mutual confidence.

Adams brought disheartening news to the travel-weary passengers on the Neptune: England had declined the offer of mediation. Yes; he had the information from the lips of Count Roumanzoff, the Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Apparently, said Adams with pursed lips, England regarded the differences with America as a sort of family quarrel in which it would not allow an outside neutral nation to interfere. Roumanzoff, however, had renewed the offer of mediation. What the motives of the Count were, he would not presume to say: Russian diplomacy was unfathomable.

The American commissioners were in a most embarrassing position. Courtesy required that they should make no move until they knew what response the second offer of mediation would evoke. The Czar was their only friend in all Europe, so far as they knew, and they were none too sure of him. They were condemned to anxious inactivity, while in middle Europe the fortunes of the Czar rose and fell. In August the combined armies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia were beaten by the fresh levies of Napoleon; in September, the fighting favored the allies; in October, Napoleon was brought to bay on the plains of Leipzig. Yet the imminent fall of the Napoleonic Empire only deepened the anxiety of the forlorn American envoys, for it was likely to multiply the difficulties of securing reasonable terms from his conqueror.

At the same time with news of the Battle of Leipzig came letters from home which informed Gallatin that his nomination as envoy had been rejected by the Senate. This was the last straw. To remain inactive as an envoy was bad enough; to stay on unaccredited seemed impossible. He determined to take advantage of a hint dropped by his friend Baring that the British Ministry, while declining mediation, was not unwilling to treat directly with the American commissioners. He would go to London in an unofficial capacity and smooth the way to negotiations. But Adams and Bayard demurred and persuaded him to defer his departure. A month later came assurances that Lord Castlereagh had offered to negotiate with the Americans either at London or at Gothenburg.

Late in January, 1814, Gallatin and Bayard set off for Amsterdam: the one to bide his chance to visit London, the other to await further instructions. There they learned that in response to Castlereagh's overtures, the President had appointed a new commission, on which Gallatin's name did not appear. Notwithstanding this disappointment, Gallatin secured the desired permission to visit London through the friendly offices of Alexander Baring. Hardly had the Americans established themselves in London when word came that the two new commissioners, Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell, had landed at Gothenburg bearing a commission for Gallatin. It seems that Gallatin was believed to be on his way home and had therefore been left off the commission; on learning of his whereabouts, the President had immediately added his name. So it happened that Gallatin stood last on the list when every consideration dictated his choice as head of the commission. The incident illustrates the difficulties that beset communication one hundred years ago. Diplomacy was a game of chance in which wind and waves often turned the score. Here were five American envoys duly accredited, one keeping his stern vigil in Russia, two on the coast of Sweden, and two in hostile London. Where would they meet? With whom were they to negotiate?

After vexatious delays Ghent was fixed upon as the place where peace negotiations should begin, and there the Americans rendezvoused during the first week in July. Further delay followed, for in spite of the assurances of Lord Castlereagh the British representatives did not make their appearance for a month. Meantime the American commissioners made themselves at home among the hospitable Flemish townspeople, with whom they became prime favorites. In the concert halls they were always greeted with enthusiasm. The musicians soon discovered that British tunes were not in favor and endeavored to learn some American airs. Had the Americans no national airs of their own, they asked. "Oh, yes!" they were assured. "There was Hail Columbia." Would not one of the gentlemen be good enough to play or sing it? An embarrassing request, for musical talent was not conspicuous in the delegation; but Peter, Gallatin's black servant, rose to the occasion. He whistled the air; and then one of the attaches scraped out the melody on a fiddle, so that the quick-witted orchestra speedily composed l'air national des Americains a grand orchestre, and thereafter always played it as a counterbalance to God save the King.

The diversions of Ghent, however, were not numerous, and time hung heavy on the hands of the Americans while they waited for the British commissioners. "We dine together at four," Adams records, "and sit usually at table until six. We then disperse to our several amusements and avocations." Clay preferred cards or billiards and the mild excitement of rather high stakes. Gallatin and his young son James preferred the theater; and all but Adams became intimately acquainted with the members of a French troupe of players whom Adams describes as the worst he ever saw. As for Adams himself, his diversion was a solitary walk of two or three hours, and then to bed.

On the 6th of August the British commissioners arrived in Ghent—Admiral Lord Gambier, Henry Goulburn, Esq., and Dr. William Adams. They were not an impressive trio. Gambier was an elderly man whom a writer in the Morning Chronicle described as a man "who slumbered for some time as a Junior Lord of Admiralty; who sung psalms, said prayers, and assisted in the burning of Copenhagen, for which he was made a lord." Goulburn was a young man who had served as an undersecretary of state. Adams was a doctor of laws who was expected perhaps to assist negotiations by his legal lore. Gallatin described them not unfairly as "men who have not made any mark, puppets of Lords Castlereagh and Liverpool." Perhaps, in justification of this choice of representatives, it should be said that the best diplomatic talent had been drafted into service at Vienna and that the British Ministry expected in this smaller conference to keep the threads of diplomacy in its own hands.

The first meeting of the negotiators was amicable enough. The Americans found their opponents courteous and well-bred; and both sides evinced a desire to avoid in word and manner, as Bayard put it, "everything of an inflammable nature." Throughout this memorable meeting at Ghent, indeed, even when difficult situations arose and nerves became taut, personal relations continued friendly. "We still keep personally upon eating and drinking terms with them," Adams wrote at a tense moment. Speaking for his superiors and his colleagues, Admiral Gambier assured the Americans of their earnest desire to end hostilities on terms honorable to both parties. Adams replied that he and his associates reciprocated this sentiment. And then, without further formalities, Goulburn stated in blunt and business-like fashion the matters on which they had been instructed: impressment, fisheries, boundaries, the pacification of the Indians, and the demarkation of an Indian territory. The last was to be regarded as a sine qua non for the conclusion of any treaty. Would the Americans be good enough to state the purport of their instructions?

The American commissioners seem to have been startled out of their composure by this sine qua non. They had no instructions on this latter point nor on the fisheries; they could only ask for a more specific statement. What had His Majesty's Government in mind when it referred to an Indian territory? With evident reluctance the British commissioners admitted that the proposed Indian territory was to serve as a buffer state between the United States and Canada. Pressed for more details, they intimated that this area thus neutralized might include the entire Northwest.

A second conference only served to show the want of any common basis for negotiation. The Americans had come to Ghent to settle two outstanding problems—blockades and indemnities for attacks on neutral commerce—and to insist on the abandonment of impressments as a sine qua non. Both commissions then agreed to appeal to their respective Governments for further instructions. Within a week, Lord Castlereagh sent precise instructions which confirmed the worst fears of the Americans. The Indian boundary line was to follow the line of the Treaty of Greenville and beyond it neither nation was to acquire land. The United States was asked, in short, to set apart for the Indians in perpetuity an area which comprised the present States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, four-fifths of Indiana, and a third of Ohio. But, remonstrated Gallatin, this area included States and Territories settled by more than a hundred thousand American citizens. What was to be done with them? "They must look after themselves," was the blunt answer.

In comparison with this astounding proposal, Lord Castlereagh's further suggestion of a "rectification" of the frontier by the cession of Fort Niagara and Sackett's Harbor and by the exclusion of the Americans from the Lakes, seemed of little importance. The purpose of His Majesty's Government, the commissioners hastened to add, was not aggrandizement but the protection of the North American provinces. In view of the avowed aim of the United States to conquer Canada, the control of the Lakes must rest with Great Britain. Indeed, taking the weakness of Canada into account, His Majesty's Government might have reasonably demanded the cession of the lands adjacent to the Lakes; and should these moderate terms not be accepted, His Majesty's Government would feel itself at liberty to enlarge its demands, if the war continued to favor British arms. The American commissioners asked if these proposals relating to the control of the Lakes were also a sine qua non. "We have given you one sine qua non already," was the reply, "and we should suppose one sine qua non at a time was enough."

The Americans returned to their hotel of one mind: they could view the proposals just made no other light than as a deliberate attempt to dismember the United States. They could differ only as to the form in which they should couch their positive rejection. As titular head of the commission, Adams set promptly to work upon a draft of an answer which he soon set before his colleagues. At once all appearance of unanimity vanished. To the enemy they could present a united front; in the privacy of their apartment, they were five headstrong men. They promptly fell upon Adams's draft tooth and nail. Adams described the scene with pardonable resentment.

"Mr. Gallatin is for striking out any expression that may be offensive to the feelings of the adverse Party. Mr. Clay is displeased with figurative language which he thinks improper for a state paper. Mr. Russell, agreeing in the objections of the two other gentlemen, will be further for amending the construction of every sentence; and Mr. Bayard, even when agreeing to say precisely the same thing, chooses to say it only in his own language."

Sharp encounters took place between Adams and Clay. "You dare not," shouted Clay in a passion on one occasion, "you CANNOT, you SHALL not insinuate that there has been a cabal of three members against you!" "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Gallatin would expostulate with a twinkle in his eye, "We must remain united or we will fail." It was his good temper and tact that saved this and many similar situations. When Bayard had essayed a draft of his own and had failed to win support, it was Gallatin who took up Adams's draft and put it into acceptable form. On the third day, after hours of "sifting, erasing, patching, and amending, until we were all wearied, though none of us satisfied," Gallatin's revision was accepted. From this moment, Gallatin's virtual leadership was unquestioned.

The American note of the 24th of August was a vigorous but even-tempered protest against the British demands as contrary to precedent and dishonorable to the United States. The American States would never consent "to abandon territory and a portion of their citizens, to admit a foreign interference in their domestic concerns, and to cease to exercise their natural rights on their own shores and in their own waters." "A treaty concluded on such terms would be but an armistice." But after the note had been prepared and dispatched, profound discouragement reigned in the American hotel. Even Gallatin, usually hopeful and philosophically serene, grew despondent. "Our negotiations may be considered at an end," he wrote to Monroe; "Great Britain wants war in order to cripple us. She wants aggrandizement at our expense.... I do not expect to be longer than three weeks in Europe." The commissioners notified their landlord that they would give up their quarters on the 1st of October; yet they lingered on week after week, waiting for the word which would close negotiations and send them home.

Meantime the British Ministry was quite as little pleased at the prospect. It would not do to let the impression go abroad that Great Britain was prepared to continue the war for territorial gains. If a rupture of the negotiations must come, Lord Castlereagh preferred to let the Americans shoulder the responsibility. He therefore instructed Gambier not to insist on the independent Indian territory and the control of the Lakes. These points were no longer to be "ultimata" but only matters for discussion. The British commissioners were to insist, however, on articles providing for the pacification of the Indians.

Should the Americans yield this sine qua non, now that the first had been withdrawn? Adams thought not, decidedly not; he would rather break off negotiations than admit the right of Great Britain to interfere with the Indians dwelling within the limits of the United States. Gallatin remarked that after all it was a very small point to insist on, when a slight concession would win much more important points. "Then, said I [Adams], with a movement of impatience and an angry tone, it is a good point to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of our Indians? Gallatin's face brightened, and he said in a tone of perfect good-humor, 'That's a non-sequitur.' This turned the edge of the argument into jocularity. I laughed, and insisted that it was a sequitur, and the conversation easily changed to another point." Gallatin had his way with the rest of the commission and drafted the note of the 26th of September, which, while refusing to recognize the Indians as sovereign nations in the treaty, proposed a stipulation that would leave them in possession of their former lands and rights. This solution of a perplexing problem was finally accepted after another exchange of notes and another earnest discussion at the American hotel, where Gallatin again poured oil on the troubled waters. Concession begat concession. New instructions from President Madison now permitted the commissioners to drop the demand for the abolition of impressments and blockades; and, with these difficult matters swept away, the path to peace was much easier to travel.

Such was the outlook for peace when news reached Ghent of the humiliating rout at Bladensburg. The British newspapers were full of jubilant comments; the five crestfallen American envoys took what cold comfort they could out of the very general condemnation of the burning of the Capitol. Then, on the heels of this intelligence, came rumors that the British invasion of New York had failed and that Prevost's army was in full retreat to Canada. The Americans could hardly grasp the full significance of this British reversal: it was too good to be true. But true it was, and their spirits rebounded.

It was at this juncture that the British commissioners presented a note, on the 21st of October, which for the first time went to the heart of the negotiations. War had been waged; territory had been overrun; conquests had been made—not the anticipated conquests on either side, to be sure, but conquests nevertheless. These were the plain facts. Now the practical question was this: Was the treaty to be drafted on the basis of the existing state of possession or on the basis of the status before the war? The British note stated their case in plain unvarnished fashion; it insisted on the status uti possidetis—the possession of territory won by arms.

In the minds of the Americans, buoyed up by the victory at Plattsburg, there was not the shadow of doubt as to what their answer should be; they declined for an instant to consider any other basis for peace than the restoration of gains on both sides. Their note was prompt, emphatic, even blunt, and it nearly shattered the nerves of the gentlemen in Downing Street. Had these stiffnecked Yankees no sense? Could they not perceive the studied moderation of the terms proposed—an island or two and a small strip of Maine—when half of Maine and the south bank of the St. Lawrence from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor might have been demanded as the price of peace?

The prospect of another year of war simply to secure a frontier which nine out of ten Englishmen could not have identified was most disquieting, especially in view of the prodigious cost of military operations in North America. The Ministry was both hot and cold. At one moment it favored continued war; at another it shrank from the consequences; and in the end it confessed its own want of decision by appealing to the Duke of Wellington and trying to shift the responsibility to his broad shoulders. Would the Duke take command of the forces in Canada? He should be invested with full diplomatic and military powers to bring the war to an honorable conclusion.

The reply of the Iron Duke gave the Ministry another shock. He would go to America, but he did not promise himself much success there, and he was reluctant to leave Europe at this critical time. To speak frankly, he had no high opinion of the diplomatic game which the Ministry was playing at Ghent. "I confess," said he, "that I think you have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession from America... You have not been able to carry it into the enemy's territory, notwithstanding your military success, and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the point of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power.... Then if this reasoning be true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory; indeed, the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any."

As Lord Liverpool perused this dispatch, the will to conquer oozed away. "I think we have determined," he wrote a few days later to Castlereagh, "if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory." He set forth his reasons for this decision succinctly: the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, the alarming condition of France, the deplorable financial outlook in England. But Lord Liverpool omitted to mention a still more potent factor in his calculations—the growing impatience of the country. The American war had ceased to be popular; it had become the graveyard of military reputations; it promised no glory to either sailor or soldier. Now that the correspondence of the negotiators at Ghent was made public, the reading public might very easily draw the conclusion that the Ministry was prolonging the war by setting up pretensions which it could not sustain. No Ministry could afford to continue a war out of mere stubbornness.

Meantime, wholly in the dark as to the forces which were working in their favor, the American commissioners set to work upon a draft of a treaty which should be their answer to the British offer of peace on the basis of uti possidetis. Almost at once dissensions occurred. Protracted negotiations and enforced idleness had set their nerves on edge, and old personal and sectional differences appeared. The two matters which caused most trouble were the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. Adams could not forget how stubbornly his father had fought for that article in the treaty of 1783 which had conceded to New England fishermen, as a natural right, freedom to fish in British waters. To a certain extent this concession had been offset by yielding to the British the right of navigation of the Mississippi, but the latter right seemed unimportant in the days when the Alleghanies marked the limit of western settlement. In the quarter of a century which had elapsed, however, the West had come into its own. It was now a powerful section with an intensely alert consciousness of its rights and wrongs; and among its rights it counted the exclusive control of the Father of Waters. Feeling himself as much the champion of Western interests as Adams did of New England fisheries, Clay refused indignantly to consent to a renewal of the treaty provisions of 1783. But when the matter came to a vote, he found himself with Russell in a minority. Very reluctantly he then agreed to Gallatin's proposal, to insert in a note, rather than in the draft itself, a paragraph to the effect that the commissioners were not instructed to discuss the rights hitherto enjoyed in the fisheries, since no further stipulation was deemed necessary to entitle them to rights which were recognized by the treaty of 1783.

When the British reply to the American project was read, Adams noted with quiet satisfaction that the reservation as to the fisheries was passed over in silence—silence, he thought, gave consent—but Clay flew into a towering passion when he learned that the old right of navigating the Mississippi was reasserted. Adams was prepared to accept the British proposals; Clay refused point blank; and Gallatin sided this time with Clay. Could a compromise be effected between these stubborn representatives of East and West? Gallatin tried once more. Why not accept the British right of navigation—surely an unimportant point after all—and ask for an express affirmation of fishery rights? Clay replied hotly that if they were going to sacrifice the West to Massachusetts, he would not sign the treaty. With infinite patience Gallatin continued to play the role of peacemaker and finally brought both these self-willed men to agree to offer a renewal of both rights.

Instead of accepting this eminently fair adjustment, the British representatives proposed that the two disputed rights be left to future negotiation. The suggestion caused another explosion in the ranks of the Americans. Adams would not admit even by implication that the rights for which his sire fought could be forfeited by war and become the subject of negotiation. But all save Adams were ready to yield. Again Gallatin came to the rescue. He penned a note rejecting the British offer, because it seemed to imply the abandonment of a right; but in turn he offered to omit in the treaty all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi or to include a general reference to further negotiation of all matters still in dispute, in such a way as not to relinquish any rights. To this solution of the difficulty all agreed, though Adams was still torn by doubts and Clay believed that the treaty was bound to be "damned bad" anyway.

An anxious week of waiting followed. On the 22d of December came the British reply—a grudging acceptance of Gallatin's first proposal to omit all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi. Two days later the treaty was signed in the refectory of the Carthusian monastery where the British commissioners were quartered. Let the tired seventeen-year-old boy who had been his father's scribe through these long weary months describe the events of Christmas Day, 1814. "The British delegates very civilly asked us to dinner," wrote James Gallatin in his diary. "The roast beef and plum pudding was from England, and everybody drank everybody else's health. The band played first God Save the King, to the toast of the King, and Yankee Doodle, to the toast of the President. Congratulations on all sides and a general atmosphere of serenity; it was a scene to be remembered. God grant there may be always peace between the two nations. I never saw father so cheerful; he was in high spirits, and his witty conversation was much appreciated." *

* "A Great Peace Maker: The Dairy of James Gallatin" (1914). p. 36.

Peace! That was the outstanding achievement of the American commissioners at Ghent. Measured by the purposes of the war-hawks of 1812, measured by the more temperate purposes of President Madison, the Treaty of Ghent was a confession of national weakness and humiliating failure. Clay, whose voice had been loudest for war and whose kindling fancy had pictured American armies dictating terms of surrender at Quebec, set his signature to a document which redressed not a single grievance and added not a foot of territory to the United States. Adams, who had denounced Great Britain for the crime of "man-stealing," accepted a treaty of peace which contained not a syllable about impressment. President Madison, who had reluctantly accepted war as the last means of escape from the blockade of American ports and the ruin of neutral trade, recommended the ratification of a convention which did not so much as mention maritime questions and the rights of neutrals.

Peace—and nothing more? Much more, indeed, than appears in rubrics on parchment. The Treaty of Ghent must be interpreted in the light of more than a hundred years of peace between the two great branches of the English-speaking race. More conscious of their differences than anything else, no doubt, these eight peacemakers at Ghent nevertheless spoke a common tongue and shared a common English trait: they laid firm hold on realities. Like practical men they faced the year 1815 and not 1812. In a pacified Europe rid of the Corsican, questions of maritime practice seemed dead issues. Let the dead past bury its dead! To remove possible causes of future controversy seemed wiser statesmanship than to rake over the embers of quarrels which might never be rekindled. So it was that in prosaic articles they provided for three commissions to arbitrate boundary controversies at critical points in the far-flung frontier between Canada and the United States, and thus laid the foundations of an international accord which has survived a hundred years.



CHAPTER XIII. SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW WORLD

It fell to the last, and perhaps least talented, President of the Virginia Dynasty to consummate the work of Jefferson and Madison by a final settlement with Spain which left the United States in possession of the Floridas. In the diplomatic service James Monroe had exhibited none of those qualities which warranted the expectation that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. On his missions to England and Spain, indeed, he had been singularly inept, but he had learned much in the rude school of experience, and he now brought to his new duties discretion, sobriety, and poise. He was what the common people held him to be a faithful public servant, deeply and sincerely republican, earnestly desirous to serve the country which he loved.

The circumstances of Monroe's election pledged him to a truly national policy. He had received the electoral votes of all but three States. * He was now President of an undivided country, not merely a Virginian fortuitously elevated to the chief magistracy and regarded as alien in sympathy to the North and East. Any doubts on this point were dispelled by the popular demonstrations which greeted him on his tour through Federalist strongholds in the Northeast. "I have seen enough," he wrote in grateful recollection, "to satisfy me that the great mass of our fellow-citizens in the Eastern States are as firmly attached to the union and republican government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of his administration.

* Monroe received 183 electoral votes and Rufus King, 34— the votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.

It was in this admirable temper and with this broad national outlook that Monroe chose his advisers and heads of departments. He was well aware of the common belief that his predecessors had appointed Virginians to the Secretaryship of State in order to prepare the way for their succession to the Presidency. He was determined, therefore, to avert the suspicion of sectional bias by selecting some one from the Eastern States, rather than from the South or from the West, hitherto so closely allied to the South. His choice fell upon John Quincy Adams, "who by his age, long experience in our foreign affairs, and adoption into the Republican party," he assured Jefferson, "seems to have superior pretentions." It was an excellent appointment from every point of view but one. Monroe had overlooked—and the circumstance did him infinite credit—the exigencies of politics and passed over an individual whose vaulting ambition had already made him an aspirant to the Presidency. Henry Clay was grievously disappointed and henceforward sulked in his tent, refusing the Secretaryship of War which the President tendered. Eventually the brilliant young John C. Calhoun took this post. This South Carolinian was in the prime of life, full of fire and dash, ardently patriotic, and nationally-minded to an unusual degree. Of William H. Crawford of Georgia, who retained the Secretaryship of the Treasury, little need be said except that he also was a presidential aspirant who saw things always from the angle of political expediency. Benjamin W. Crowninshield as Secretary of the Navy and William Wirt as Attorney-General completed the circle of the President's intimate advisers.

The new Secretary of State had not been in office many weeks before he received a morning call from Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister, who was laboring under ill-disguised excitement. It appeared that his house in Washington had been repeatedly "insulted" of late-windows broken, lamps in front of the house smashed, and one night a dead fowl tied to his bell-rope. This last piece of vandalism had been too much for his equanimity. He held it a gross insult to his sovereign and the Spanish monarchy, importing that they were of no more consequence than a dead old hen! Adams, though considerably amused, endeavored to smooth the ruffled pride of the chevalier by suggesting that these were probably only the tricks of some mischievous boys; but De Onis was not easily appeased. Indeed, as Adams was himself soon to learn, the American public did regard the Spanish monarchy as a dead old hen, and took no pains to disguise its contempt. Adams had yet to learn the long train of circumstances which made Spanish relations the most delicate and difficult of all the diplomatic problems in his office.

With his wonted industry, Adams soon made himself master of the facts relating to Spanish diplomacy. For the moment interest centered on East Florida. Carefully unraveling the tangled skein of events, Adams followed the thread which led back to President Madison's secret message to Congress of January 3,1811, which was indeed one of the landmarks in American policy. Madison had recommended a declaration "that the United States could not see without serious inquietude any part of a neighboring territory [like East Florida] in which they have in different respects so deep and so just a concern pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other foreign power." To prevent the possible subversion of Spanish authority in East Florida and the occupation of the province by a foreign power—Great Britain was, of course, the power the President had in mind—he had urged Congress to authorize him to take temporary possession "in pursuance of arrangements which may be desired by the Spanish authorities." Congress had responded with alacrity and empowered the President to occupy East Florida in case the local authorities should consent or a foreign power should attempt to occupy it.

With equal dispatch the President had sent two agents, General George Matthews and Colonel John McKee, on one of the strangest missions in the border history of the United States.

East Florida—Adams found, pursuing his inquiries into the archives of the department—included the two important ports of entry, Pensacola on the Gulf and Fernandina on Amelia Island, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River. The island had long been a notorious resort for smugglers. Hither had come British and American vessels with cargoes of merchandise and slaves, which found their way in mysterious fashion to consignees within the States. A Spanish garrison of ten men was the sole custodian of law and order on the island. Up and down the river was scattered a lawless population of freebooters, who were equally ready to raid a border plantation or to raise the Jolly Roger on some piratical cruise. To this No Man's Land—fertile recruiting ground for all manner of filibustering expeditions—General Matthews and Colonel McKee had betaken themselves in the spring of 1811, bearing some explicit instructions from President Madison but also some very pronounced convictions as to what they were expected to accomplish. Matthews, at least, understood that the President wished a revolution after the West Florida model. He assured the Administration-Adams read the precious missive in the files of his office-that he could do the trick. Only let the Government consign two hundred stand of arms and fifty horsemen's swords to the commander at St. Mary's, and he would guarantee to put the revolution through without committing the United States in any way.

The melodrama had been staged for the following spring (1812). Some two hundred "patriots" recruited from the border people gathered near St. Mary's with souls yearning for freedom; and while American gunboats took a menacing position, this force of insurgents had landed on Amelia Island and summoned the Spanish commandant to surrender. Not willing to spoil the scene by vulgar resistance, the commandant capitulated and marched out his garrison, ten strong, with all the honors of war. The Spanish flag had been hauled down to give place to the flag of the insurgents, bearing the inspiring motto Salus populi—suprema lex. Then General Matthews with a squad of regular United States troops had crossed the river and taken possession. Only the benediction of the Government at Washington was lacking to make the success of his mission complete; but to the general's consternation no approving message came, only a peremptory dispatch disavowing his acts and revoking his commission.

As Adams reviewed these events, he could see no other alternative for the Government to have pursued at this moment when war with Great Britain was impending. It would have been the height of folly to break openly with Spain. The Administration had indeed instructed its new agent, Governor Mitchell of Georgia, to restore the island to the Spanish commandant and to withdraw his troops, if he could do so without sacrificing the insurgents to the vengeance of the Spaniards. But the forces set in motion by Matthews were not so easily controlled from Washington. Once having resolved to liberate East Florida, the patriots were not disposed to retire at the nod of the Secretary of State. The Spanish commandant was equally obdurate. He would make no promise to spare the insurgents. The Legislature of Georgia, too, had a mind of its own. It resolved that the occupation of East Florida was essential to the safety of the State, whether Congress approved or no; and the Governor, swept along in the current of popular feeling, summoned troops from Savannah to hold the province. Just at this moment had come the news of war with Great Britain; and Governor, State militia, and patriots had combined in an effort to prevent East Florida from becoming enemy's territory.

Military considerations had also swept the Administration along the same hazardous course. The occupation of the Floridas seemed imperative. The President sought authorization from Congress to occupy and govern both the Floridas until the vexed question of title could be settled by negotiation. Only a part of this programme had carried, for, while Congress was prepared to approve the military occupation of West Florida to the Perdido River, beyond that it would not go; and so with great reluctance the President had ordered the troops to withdraw from Amelia Island. In the spring of the same year (1813) General Wilkinson had occupied West Florida—the only permanent conquest of the war and that, oddly enough, the conquest of a territory owned and held by a power with which the United States was not at war.

Abandoned by the American troops, Amelia Island had become a rendezvous for outlaws from every part of the Americas. Just about the time that Adams was crossing the ocean to take up his duties at the State Department, one of these buccaneers by the name of Gregor MacGregor descended upon the island as "Brigadier General of the Armies of the United Provinces of New Granada and Venezuela, and General-in-chief of that destined to emancipate the provinces of both Floridas, under the commission of the Supreme Government of Mexico and South America." This pirate was soon succeeded by General Aury, who had enjoyed a wild career among the buccaneers of Galveston Bay, where he had posed as military governor under the Republic of Mexico. East Florida in the hands of such desperadoes was a menace to the American border. Approaching the problem of East Florida without any of the prepossessions of those who had been dealing with Spanish envoys for a score of years, the new Secretary of State was prepared to move directly to his goal without any too great consideration for the feelings of others. His examination of the facts led him to a clean-cut decision: this nest of pirates must be broken up at once. His energy carried President and Cabinet along with him. It was decided to send troops and ships to the St. Mary's and if necessary to invest Fernandina. This demonstration of force sufficed; General Aury departed to conquer new worlds, and Amelia Island was occupied for the second time without bloodshed.

But now, having grasped the nettle firmly, what was the Administration to do with it? De Onis promptly registered his protest; the opposition in Congress seized upon the incident to worry the President; many of the President's friends thought that he had been precipitate. Monroe, indeed, would have been glad to withdraw the troops now that they had effected their object, but Adams was for holding the island in order to force Spain to terms. With a frankness which lacerated the feelings of De Onis, Adams insisted that the United States had acted strictly on the defensive. The occupation of Amelia Island was not an act of aggression but a necessary measure for the protection of commerce—American commerce, the commerce of other nations, the commerce of Spain itself. Now why not put an end to all friction by ceding the Floridas to the United States? What would Spain take for all her possessions east of the Mississippi, Adams asked. De Onis declined to say. Well, then, Adams pursued, suppose the United States should withdraw from Amelia Island, would Spain guarantee that it should not be occupied again by free-booters? No: De Onis could give no such guarantee, but he would write to the Governor of Havana to ascertain if he would send an adequate garrison to Fernandina. Adams reported this significant conversation to the President, who was visibly shaken by the conflict of opinions within his political household and not a little alarmed at the possibility of war with Spain. The Secretary of State was coolly taking the measure of his chief. "There is a slowness, want of decision, and a spirit of procrastination in the President," he confided to his diary. He did not add, but the thought was in his mind, that he could sway this President, mold him to his heart's desire. In this first trial of strength the hardier personality won: Monroe sent a message to Congress, on January 13, 1818, announcing his intention to hold East Florida for the present, and the arguments which he used to justify this bold course were precisely those of his Secretary of State.

When Adams suggested that Spain might put an end to all her worries by ceding the Floridas, he was only renewing an offer that Monroe had made while he was still Secretary of State. De Onis had then declared that Spain would never cede territory east of the Mississippi unless the United States would relinquish its claims west of that river. Now, to the new Secretary, De Onis intimated that he was ready to be less exacting. He would be willing to run the line farther west and allow the United States a large part of what is now the State of Louisiana. Adams made no reply to this tentative proposal but bided his time; and time played into his hands in unexpected ways.

To the Secretary's office, one day in June, 1818, came a letter from De Onis which was a veritable firebrand. De Onis, who was not unnaturally disposed to believe the worst of Americans on the border, had heard that General Andrew Jackson in pursuit of the Seminole Indians had crossed into Florida and captured Pensacola and St. Mark's. He demanded to be informed "in a positive, distinct and explicit manner just what had occurred"; and then, outraged by confirmatory reports and without waiting for Adams's reply, he wrote another angry letter, insisting upon the restitution of the captured forts and the punishment of the American general. Worse tidings followed. Bagot, the British Minister, had heard that Jackson had seized and executed two British subjects on Spanish soil. Would the Secretary of State inform him whether General Jackson had been authorized to take Pensacola, and would the Secretary furnish him with copies of the reports of the courts-martial which had condemned these two subjects of His Majesty? Adams could only reply that he lacked official information.

By the second week in July, dispatches from General Jackson confirmed the worst insinuations and accusations of De Onis and Bagot. President Monroe was painfully embarrassed. Prompt disavowal of the general's conduct seemed the only way to avert war; but to disavow the acts of this popular idol, the victor of New Orleans, was no light matter. He sought the advice of his Cabinet and was hardly less embarrassed to find all but one convinced that "Old Hickory" had acted contrary to instructions and had committed acts of hostility against Spain. A week of anxious Cabinet sessions followed, in which only one voice was raised in defense of the invasion of Florida. All but Adams feared war, a war which the opposition would surely brand as incited by the President without the consent of Congress. No administration could carry on a war begun in violation of the Constitution, said Calhoun. But, argued Adams, the President may authorize defensive acts of hostility. Jackson had been authorized to cross the frontier, if necessary, in pursuit of the Indians, and all the ensuing deplorable incidents had followed as a necessary consequence of Indian warfare.

The conclusions of the Cabinet were summed up by Adams in a reply to De Onis, on the 23d of July, which must have greatly astonished that diligent defender of Spanish honor. Opening the letter to read, as he confidently expected, a disavowal and an offer of reparation, he found the responsibility for the recent unpleasant incidents fastened upon his own country. He was reminded that by the treaty of 1795 both Governments had contracted to restrain the Indians within their respective borders, so that neither should suffer from hostile raids, and that the Governor of Pensacola, when called upon to break up a stronghold of Indians and fugitive slaves, had acknowledged his obligation but had pleaded his inability to carry out the covenant. Then, and then only, had General Jackson been authorized to cross the border and to put an end to outrages which the Spanish authorities lacked the power to prevent. General Jackson had taken possession of the Spanish forts on his own responsibility when he became convinced of the duplicity of the commandant, who, indeed, had made himself "a partner and accomplice of the hostile Indians and of their foreign instigators." Such conduct on the part of His Majesty's officer justified the President in calling for his punishment. But, in the meantime, the President was prepared to restore Pensacola, and also St. Mark's, whenever His Majesty should send a force sufficiently strong to hold the Indians under control.

Nor did the Secretary of State moderate his tone or abate his demands when Pizarro, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, threatened to suspend negotiations with the United States until it should give satisfaction for this "shameful invasion of His Majesty's territory" and for these "acts of barbarity glossed over with the forms of justice." In a dispatch to the American Minister at Madrid, Adams vigorously defended Jackson's conduct from beginning to end. The time had come, said he, when "Spain must immediately make her election either to place a force in Florida adequate at once to the protection of her territory and to the fulfilment of her engagements or cede to the United States a province of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession, but which is in fact a derelict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States and serving no other earthly purpose, than as a post of annoyance to them."

This affront to Spanish pride might have ended abruptly a chapter in Spanish-American diplomacy but for the friendly offices of Hyde de Neuville, the French Minister at Washington, whose Government could not view without alarm the possibility of a rupture between the two countries. It was Neuville who labored through the summer months of this year, first with Adams, then with De Onis, tempering the demands of the one and placating the pride of the other, but never allowing intercourse to drop. Adams was right, and both Neuville and De Onis knew it; the only way to settle outstanding differences was to cede these Spanish derelicts in the New World to the United States.

To bring and keep together these two antithetical personalities, representatives of two opposing political systems, was no small achievement. What De Onis thought of his stubborn opponent may be surmised; what the American thought of the Spaniard need not be left to conjecture. In the pages of his diary Adams painted the portrait of his adversary as he saw him—"cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his temper, proud because he is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponents, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded."

The history of the negotiations running through the fall and winter is a succession of propositions and counter-propositions, made formally by the chief participants or tentatively and informally through Neuville. The western boundary of the Louisiana purchase was the chief obstacle to agreement. Each sparred for an advantage; each made extreme claims; and each was persuaded to yield a little here and a little there, slowly narrowing the bounds of the disputed territory. More than once the President and the Cabinet believed that the last concession had been extorted and were prepared to yield on other matters. When the President was prepared, for example, to accept the hundredth meridian and the forty-third parallel, Adams insisted on demanding the one hundred and second and the forty-second; and "after a long and violent struggle," wrote Adams, "he [De Onis]. .. agreed to take longitude one hundred from the Red River to the Arkansas, and latitude forty-two from the source of the Arkansas to the South Sea." This was a momentous decision, for the United States acquired thus whatever claim Spain had to the northwest coast but sacrificed its claim to Texas for the possession of the Floridas.

Vexatious questions still remained to be settled. The spoliation claims which were to have been adjusted by the convention of 1802 were finally left to a commission, the United States agreeing to assume all obligations to an amount not exceeding five million dollars. De Onis demurred at stating this amount in the treaty: he would be blamed for having betrayed the honor of Spain by selling the Floridas for a paltry five millions. To which Adams replied dryly that he ought to boast of his bargain instead of being ashamed of it, since it was notorious that the Floridas had always been a burden to the Spanish exchequer. Negotiations came to a standstill again when Adams insisted that certain royal grants of land in the Floridas should be declared null and void. He feared, and not without reason, that these grants would deprive the United States of the domain which was to be used to pay the indemnities assumed in the treaty. De Onis resented the demand as "offensive to the dignity and imprescriptible rights of the Crown of Spain"; and once again Neuville came to the rescue of the treaty and persuaded both parties to agree to a compromise. On the understanding that the royal grants in question had been made subsequent to January 24, 1818, Adams agreed that all grants made since that date (when the first proposal was made by His Majesty for the cession of the Floridas) should be declared null and void; and that all grants made before that date should be confirmed.

On the anniversary of Washington's birthday, De Onis and Adams signed the treaty which carried the United States to its natural limits on the southeast. The event seemed to Adams to mark "a great epocha in our history." "It was near one in the morning," he recorded in his diary, "when I closed the day with ejaculations of fervent gratitude to the Giver of all good. It was, perhaps, the most important day of my life.... Let no idle and unfounded exultation take possession of my mind, as if I would ascribe to my own foresight or exertions any portion of the event." But misgivings followed hard on these joyous reflections. The treaty had still to be ratified, and the disposition of the Spanish Cortes was uncertain. There was, too, considerable opposition in the Senate. "A watchful eye, a resolute purpose, a calm and patient temper, and a favoring Providence will all be as indispensable for the future as they have been for the past in the management of this negotiation," Adams reminded himself. He had need of all these qualities in the trying months that followed.



CHAPTER XIV. FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY

The decline and fall of the Spanish Empire does not challenge the imagination like the decline and fall of that other Empire with which alone it can be compared, possibly because no Gibbon has chronicled its greatness. Yet its dissolution affected profoundly the history of three continents. While the Floridas were slipping from the grasp of Spain, the provinces to the south were wrenching themselves loose, with protestations which penetrated to European chancelleries as well as to American legislative halls. To Czar Alexander and Prince Metternich, sponsors for the Holy Alliance and preservers of the peace of Europe, these declarations of independence contained the same insidious philosophy of revolution which they had pledged themselves everywhere to combat. To simple American minds, the familiar words liberty and independence in the mouths of South American patriots meant what they had to their own grandsires, struggling to throw off the shackles of British imperial control. Neither Europe nor America, however, knew the actual conditions in these newborn republics below the equator; and both governed their conduct by their prepossessions.

To the typically American mind of Henry Clay, now untrammeled by any sense of responsibility, for he was a free lance in the House of Representatives once more, the emancipation of South America was a thrilling and sublime spectacle—"the glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people struggling to burst their chains and to be free." In a memorable speech in 1818 he had expressed the firm conviction that there could be but one outcome to this struggle. Independent these South American states would be. Equally clear to his mind was their political destiny. Whatever their forms of government, they would be animated by an American feeling and guided by an American policy. "They will obey the laws of the system of the new world, of which they will compose a part, in contradistinction to that of Europe." To this struggle and to this destiny the United States could not remain indifferent. He would not have the Administration depart from its policy of strict and impartial neutrality but he would urge the expediency—nay, the justice—of recognizing established governments in Spanish America. Such recognition was not a breach of neutrality, for it did not imply material aid in the wars of liberation but only the moral sympathy of a great free people for their southern brethren.

Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the attitude of the Administration, directed by the prudent Secretary of State, seemed cold, calculating, and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams could see little resemblance between these revolutions in South America and that of 1776. Certainly it had never been disgraced by such acts of buccaneering and piracy as were of everyday occurrence in South American waters. The United States had contended for civil rights and then for independence; in South America civil rights had been ignored by all parties. He could discern neither unity of cause nor unity of effort in the confused history of recent struggles in South America; and until orderly government was achieved, with due regard to fundamental civil rights, he would not have the United States swerve in the slightest degree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. Clay, he observed in his diary, had "mounted his South American great horse... to control or overthrow the executive."

President Monroe, however, was more impressionable, more responsive to popular opinion, and at this moment (as the presidential year approached) more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed with Adams that the moment had not come when the United States alone might safely recognize the South American states, but he believed that concerted action by the United States and Great Britain might win recognition without wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time was surely not far distant when Spain would welcome recognition as a relief from an impoverishing and hopeless war. Meanwhile the President coupled professions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy for the revolutionists in every message to Congress.

The temporizing policy of the Administration aroused Clay to another impassioned plea for those southern brethren whose hearts—despite all rebuffs from the Department of State—still turned toward the United States. "We should become the center of a system which would constitute the rallying point of human freedom against the despotism of the Old World.... Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility and recognize these governments as independent, instead of taking the lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which jeopardizes the happiness of unborn millions?" He deprecated this deference to foreign powers. "If Lord Castlereagh says we may recognize, we do; if not, we do not.... Our institutions now make us free; but how long shall we continue so, if we mold our opinions on those of Europe? Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system."

The question of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment to wish to avoid further causes of irritation to Spanish pride. It is more than probable, indeed, that Clay was not unwilling to embarrass the President and his Secretary of State. He still nursed his personal grudge against the President and he did not disguise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused his resentment was the sacrifice of Texas for Florida. Florida would have fallen to the United States eventually like ripened fruit, he believed. Why, then, yield an incomparably richer and greater territory for that which was bound to become theirs whenever the American people wished to take it?

But what were the explanations which Vives demanded? Weary hours spent in conference with the wily Spaniard convinced Adams that the great obstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain had been the conviction that the United States was only waiting ratification to recognize the independence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did Adams regret the advances which he had made to Great Britain, at the instance of the President, and still more bitterly did he deplore those paragraphs in the President's messages which had expressed an all too ready sympathy with the aims of the insurgents. But regrets availed nothing and the Secretary of State had to put the best face possible on the policy of the Administration. He told Vives in unmistakable language that the United States could not subscribe to "new engagements as the price of obtaining the ratification of the old." Certainly the United States would not comply with the Spanish demand and pledge itself "to form no relations with the pretended governments of the revolted provinces of Spain." As for the royal grants which De Onis had agreed to call null and void, if His Majesty insisted upon their validity, perhaps the United States might acquiesce for an equivalent area west of the Sabine River. In some alarm Vives made haste to say that the King did not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. In the end he professed himself satisfied with Mr. Adams's explanations; he would send a messenger to report to His Majesty and to secure formal authorization to exchange ratifications.

Another long period of suspense followed. The Spanish Cortes did not advise the King to accept the treaty until October; the Senate did not reaffirm its ratification until the following February; and it was two years to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vives exchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of his diary, so that posterity might read, the conviction that the hand of an Overruling Providence was visible in this, the most important event of his life.

If, as many thought, the Administration had delayed recognition of the South American republics in order not to offend Spanish feelings while the Florida treaty was under consideration, it had now no excuse for further hesitation; yet it was not until March 8, 1822, that President Monroe announced to Congress his belief that the time had come when those provinces of Spain which had declared their independence and were in the enjoyment of it should be formally recognized. On the 19th of June he received the accredited charge d'affaires of the Republic of Colombia.

The problem of recognition was not the only one which the impending dissolution of the Spanish colonial empire left to harass the Secretary of State. Just because Spain had such vast territorial pretensions and held so little by actual occupation on the North American continent, there was danger that these shadowy claims would pass into the hands of aggressive powers with the will and resources to aggrandize themselves. One day in January, 1821, while Adams was awaiting the outcome of his conferences with Vives, Stratford Canning, the British Minister, was announced at his office. Canning came to protest against what he understood was the decision of the United States to extend its settlements at the mouth of the Columbia River. Adams replied that he knew of no such determination; but he deemed it very probable that the settlements on the Pacific coast would be increased. Canning expressed rather ill-matured surprise at this statement, for he conceived that such a policy would be a palpable violation of the Convention of 1818. Without replying, Adams rose from his seat to procure a copy of the treaty and then read aloud the parts referring to the joint occupation of the Oregon country. A stormy colloquy followed in which both participants seem to have lost their tempers. Next day Canning returned to the attack, and Adams challenged the British claim to the mouth of the Columbia. "Why," exclaimed Canning, "do you not KNOW that we have a claim?" "I do not KNOW," said Adams, "what you claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you claim—" "Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon." "No," replied Adams, "I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of the moon; but there is not a spot on THIS habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim; and there is none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River or its mouth."

With equal sang-froid, the Secretary of State met threatened aggression from another quarter. In September of this same year, the Czar issued a ukase claiming the Pacific coast as far south as the fifty-first parallel and declaring Bering Sea closed to the commerce of other nations. Adams promptly refused to recognize these pretensions and declared to Baron de Tuyll, the Russian Minister, "that we should contest the right of Russia to ANY territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments." *

* Before Adams retired from office, he had the satisfaction of concluding a treaty (1824) with Russia by which the Czar abandoned his claims to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea and agreed to plant no colonies on the Pacific Coast south of 54 degrees 40 minutes.

Not long after this interview Adams was notified by Baron Tuyll that the Czar, in conformity with the political principles of the allies, had determined in no case whatever to receive any agent from the Government of the Republic of Colombia or from any other government which owed its existence to the recent events in the New World. Adams's first impulse was to pen a reply that would show the inconsistency between these political principles and the unctuous professions of Christian duty which had resounded in the Holy Alliance; but the note which he drafted was, perhaps fortunately, not dispatched until it had been revised by President and Cabinet a month later, under stress of other circumstances.

At still another focal point the interests of the United States ran counter to the covetous desires of European powers. Cuba, the choicest of the provinces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal; but, should the hold of Spain upon this Pearl of the Antilles relax, every maritime power would swoop down upon it. The immediate danger, however, was not that revolution would here as elsewhere sever the province from Spain, leaving it helpless and incapable of self-support, but that France, after invading Spain and restoring the monarchy, would also intervene in the affairs of her provinces. The transfer of Cuba to France by the grateful King was a possibility which haunted the dreams of George Canning at Westminster as well as of John Quincy Adams at Washington. The British Foreign Minister attempted to secure a pledge from France that she would not acquire any Spanish-American territory either by conquest or by treaty, while the Secretary of State instructed the American Minister to Spain not to conceal from the Spanish Government "the repugnance of the United States to the transfer of the Island of Cuba by Spain to any other power." Canning was equally fearful lest the United States should occupy Cuba and he would have welcomed assurances that it had no designs upon the island. Had he known precisely the attitude of Adams, he would have been still more uneasy, for Adams was perfectly sure that Cuba belonged "by the laws of political as well as of physical gravitation" to the North American continent, though he was not for the present ready to assist the operation of political and physical laws.

Events were inevitably detaching Great Britain from the concert of Europe and putting her in opposition to the policy of intervention, both because of what it meant in Spain and what it might mean when applied to the New World. Knowing that the United States shared these latter apprehensions, George Canning conceived that the two countries might join in a declaration against any project by any European power for subjugating the colonies of South America either on behalf or in the name of Spain. He ventured to ask Richard Rush, American Minister at London, what his government would say to such a proposal. For his part he was quite willing to state publicly that he believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain to be hopeless; that recognition of their independence was only a question of proper time and circumstance; that Great Britain did not aim at the possession of any of them, though she could not be indifferent to their transfer to any other power. "If," said Canning, "these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly believe them to be, common to your government with ours, why should we hesitate mutually to confide them to each other; and to declare them in the face of the world?"

Why, indeed? To Rush there occurred one good and sufficient answer, which, however, he could not make: he doubted the disinterestedness of Great Britain. He could only reply that he would not feel justified in assuming the responsibility for a joint declaration unless Great Britain would first unequivocally recognize the South American republics; and, when Canning balked at the suggestion, he could only repeat, in as conciliatory manner as possible, his reluctance to enter into any engagement. Not once only but three times Canning repeated his overtures, even urging Rush to write home for powers and instructions.

The dispatches of Rush seemed so important to President Monroe that he sent copies of them to Jefferson and Madison, with the query—which revealed his own attitude—whether the moment had not arrived when the United States might safely depart from its traditional policy and meet the proposal of the British Government. If there was one principle which ran consistently through the devious foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison, it was that of political isolation from Europe. "Our first and fundamental maxim," Jefferson wrote in reply, harking back to the old formulas, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs." He then continued in this wise:

"America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the band of despots, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government and emancipate a continent at one stroke which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.... I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent, instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war.... Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Buonaparte, and now continued by the equally lawless alliance, calling itself Holy."

Madison argued the case with more reserve but arrived at the same conclusion: "There ought not to be any backwardness therefore, I think, in meeting her [England] in the way she has proposed." The dispatches of Rush produced a very different effect, however, upon the Secretary of State, whose temperament fed upon suspicion and who now found plenty of food for thought both in what Rush said and in what he did not say. Obviously Canning was seeking a definite compact with the United States against the designs of the allies, not out of any altruistic motive but for selfish ends. Great Britain, Rush had written bluntly, had as little sympathy with popular rights as it had on the field of Lexington. It was bent on preventing France from making conquests, not on making South America free. Just so, Adams reasoned: Canning desires to secure from the United States a public pledge "ostensibly against the forcible interference of the Holy Alliance between Spain and South America; but really or especially against the acquisition to the United States themselves of any part of the Spanish-American possessions." By joining with Great Britain we would give her a "substantial and perhaps inconvenient pledge against ourselves, and really obtain nothing in return." He believed that it would be more candid and more dignified to decline Canning's overtures and to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France. For his part he did not wish the United States "to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war!"

Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the Cabinet, quite ignorant of the correspondence which had passed between the President and his mentors. Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he asked no more congenial task than to draft replies to Baron Tuyll and to Canning and instructions to the ministers at London, St. Petersburg, and Paris; but he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of making all these communications "part of a combined system of policy and adapted to each other." Not so easily, however, was the President detached from the influence of the two Virginia oracles. He took sharp exception to the letter which Adams drafted in reply to Baron Tuyll, saying that he desired to refrain from any expressions which would irritate the Czar; and thus turned what was to be an emphatic declaration of principles into what Adams called "the tamest of state papers."

The Secretary's draft of instructions to Rush had also to run the gauntlet of amendment by the President and his Cabinet; but it emerged substantially unaltered in content and purpose. Adams professed to find common ground with Great Britain, while pointing out with much subtlety that if she believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain was really hopeless, she was under moral obligation to recognize them as independent states and to favor only such an adjustment between them and the mother country as was consistent with the fact of independence. The United States was in perfect accord with the principles laid down by Mr. Canning: it desired none of the Spanish possessions for itself but it could not see with indifference any portion of them transferred to any other power. Nor could the United States see with indifference "any attempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore those new states to the crown of Spain, or to deprive them, in any manner whatever, of the freedom and independence which they have acquired." But, for accomplishing the purposes which the two governments had in common—and here the masterful Secretary of State had his own way—it was advisable THAT THEY SHOULD ACT SEPARATELY, each making such representations to the continental allies as circumstances dictated.

Further communications from Baron Tuyll gave Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of enunciating the principles underlying American policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 1823, he adverted to the declaration of the allied monarchs that they would never compound with revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee the tranquillity of civilized states. In such declarations "the President," wrote Adams, "wishes to perceive sentiments, the application of which is limited, and intended in their results to be limited to the affairs of Europe.... The United States of America, and their government, could not see with indifference, the forcible interposition of any European Power, other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over her emancipated Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical Governments in those Countries, or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore or yet subject to Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other European Power."